New Artist of the Month: Andrei Bondarenko
By Larry L. Lash
MusicalAmerica.com
September 1, 2010


SALZBURG -- Wishes don’t always come true: Andrei Bondarenko never fulfilled his childhood dream of becoming a professional jazz musician. But making his debut at the Salzburger Festspiele at the age of 23 is not such a bad second best.

We met on August 14, four days after his debut. Sitting in a small, quiet courtyard, an oasis nestled in the middle of Salzburg’s bustling festival-time alleys, the young Bondarenko exudes an air of confidence, but also gratitude for, to use his favorite English word, the “amazing” string of events that led him to Salzburg.

Growing up, music was not a part of the Bondarenko household in the small Ukrainian town of Kamenec-Podolsky. Andrei’s father was a sailor in the Black Sea for the Soviet government. “Something like K.G.B.” he says with a devilish grin. “He’s now a businessman.” His mother organizes community events.

But there was no small share of recordings, and by age six Andrei was listening exclusively to jazz. By the following year, he says, “I really knew that I would be a musician.” At his local school, Andrei took up study of the saxophone. He was just ten. “It was almost as big as I was,” he laughs. It wasn’t until age 13, when he joined the local church choir, that he discovered he had passed the boy soprano stage and was a full-fledged baritone.

“I became interested in studying voice. In the beginning, I didn’t want to be an opera singer: I had my saxophone. But my teacher gave me a love for opera and classical music.”

He began a voracious study of singers via a treasure trove of old LPs at his school, but could only obtain recordings of Russian singers. “Atlantov, Mazurok, Pavel Lisitsian – all from the Bolshoi. It was only Russian opera, or if it was an Italian opera it was sung in Russian. This was not good. When I began at conservatory, I listened to a lot of Italian singers: Tagliabue, Bastianini – he was the greatest! – and now Nucci and Bruson. These are the most influential for me.”

I ask about the first opera he ever saw, and Andrei nonchalantly confesses that he was actually in it. “It was in the conservatory at Kiev when I was 16. The other people in my class were 27, 28, 29. We had an opera studio in my first year there, and my first role was very small: Baron Douphol in ‘La traviata.’ I had never seen an opera before.”

In addition to his studies, at conservatory Andrei met his wife, Eleonora Vindau, whom he married eight months ago. “We are very lucky because she is a singer, too, a soprano, and we’re both in the opera studio at the Mariinsky. We’ve sung Papageno and Papagena together there and ‘The Telephone’ from Menotti – in English! – and now she is here at the Young Singers Project.”

After five years of study, Andrei was advised to find an agent and flew to London to audition for the prestigious Askonas Holt. Evamaria Wieser, casting director for the Salzburger Festspiele, was in attendance. He won on both accounts: the agency accepted him as one if its youngest clients and Wieser invited him to Salzburg for the 2009 Young Singers Project, which he accepted on the spot.

In Salzburg, he studied all aspects of singing and stagecraft and rubbed shoulders with the likes of Thomas Quasthoff, whom he great admires. He was assigned to cover Gerald Finley as the Count in “Le nozze di Figaro.” This led to an invitation to make his formal Salzburg debut on Aug. 10, 2010 as Grégorio in Bartlett Sher’s production of “Roméo et Juliette.”

“Bart! He’s really an amazing guy, and so is B.H. [Barry], the fight director. For me it was really amazing because I never had a fight scene in an opera and Bart and B.H. were so easy to work with. Bart could say just one word and tell me what to do, and even though it’s such a small role, he really made Grégorio a person. So it’s great for me to work with them. I hope we will meet again somewhere… maybe at the Met!” he says with a hearty laugh.

“It’s amazing for me to meet Netrebko and work with so many beautiful singers here: Piotr Beczala, Russell Braun – we have such a great cast in ‘Roméo.’ In 2003 when I was in conservatory I saw a video of Hvorostovsky and Netrebko and I thought it would be so good if I would sing with her sometime, and now it’s happened!”

With only a few solo lines, Grégorio is indeed not a role by which to judge a voice, but it did show his strong stage presence and endearing demeanor with his mop of dark blond hair, trim goatee and intense green eyes. I was blown away, however, when I heard him sing "Hai gia vinta la causa," the Count's aria from "Le nozze di Figaro," in the Young Artists’ recital last summer. His lyric baritone, far mature beyond its years, is an instrument of great beauty with rock-solid technique and an innate sense of word coloring. By now he’s an old hand at Tchaikovsky’s worldly Onegin: he sang the complete role in a full production at the conservatory studio when he was 19. Is it his favorite role?

“Yes, I think yes for now. My dream role is funny, but it will never happen: Scarpia. Maybe in 30 years! But now I want to sing a lot of Mozart and Donizetti. Bel canto is such beautiful music, and Mozart is like a doctor for my voice, so I must do this. Furlanetto sang only Mozart until he was 35.”

What’s next? “After Salzburg I will audition for Theater an der Wien, and then at The Mariinsky I have more Papagenos, and then Malatesta [the baritone lead in Donizetti’s “Don Pasquale”] at Glyndebourne. In 2012 I will do Marcello [in “La bohème”] at Glyndebourne.” He also wants to work on his English. “I began to study English in school when I was ten, but after school my English I think is now very bad, so I want to learn when I am meeting people outside of Russia.”

Free time? Hobbies? “I listen to jazz and jazz-rock. I really don’t like pop. To get away from music, I really like to cook a Ukrainian dish for the cast of my performance. It’s a special dish with fish and vegetables – very tasty!”

Andrei’s current role model is Bryn Terfel. “For me, he’s an example of what it’s like to be a good singer, good musician, good actor, and with a big heart and soul. I really want to be a good musician with a heart so big the audience feels this.”



To read this article on the Musical America website please click here

Andrei Bondarenko: new face

This soft-spoken Ukranian baritone is his own musical man.

By Rupert Christiansen
the Telegraph 12 Oct 2011


Who is he?
A soft-spoken 24-year old Ukrainian baritone who captured all hearts when he won the song prize at the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition last June.

What’s his story?
First he was selected by Valery Gergiev’s sister Larissa from the conservatory in Kiev to join her Academy for Young Singers in St Petersburg. Now he’s on track to a major international career.

What brings him here again?
Glyndebourne has snapped him up for two leading roles — this week he sings the scheming Doctor Malatesta in a new production of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, and next summer he will return to Glyndebourne Festival as the painter Marcello in La Bohème.

Who does he sound like?
Andrei benefited from study in Kiev with Valery Buimister, who taught him the art of singing German lieder as well as Russian song. Now he admires Bryn Terfel (“a wonderful mix of everything”), Dmitri Hvorostovsky (“for Tchaikovsky and Rakhmaninov”) and Gerald Finley (“for Mozart”), but he is his own musical man, with a distinctively smooth, clean sound and light elegance of style.

And his favourite composer?
At this stage of his career, it must be Mozart. Together with his soprano wife Eleonora Vindau, he has sung Le Nozze di Figaro and Die Zauberflöte in St Petersburg. “And I hope to do a lot more. Only Don Giovanni, not quite yet.”

'Don Pasquale’ is at Glyndebourne (01273 813813) until Oct 29, then touring until Dec 3

To read this article on the Telegraph website please click here